Reddit Communities Go Private in Protest Over Policy Adjustments

[erek]

Big Protests!!! Also API issues

"They explained the though process behind the virtual march: "If it was a single subreddit going private, Reddit may intervene. But if it's half the entire website, then you feel a lot more pressured. This is a completely volunteer position, we don't receive any financial compensation, and despite that, we do like to take it quite seriously. Our entire community is supporting us against this change...It feels good to be able to have the power to say: 'We will not continue to moderate our communities if you push these changes through...If it's almost the entire website, would they destroy what they've built up in all these communities, just to push through this highly unpopular change that both the mods and users of Reddit are overwhelmingly against?"

Reddit's policy changes will introduce sizable charges for "premium access", which effectively kill off the need for popular third-party Reddit applications - such as Apollo, Reddit is Fun, Sync and ReddPlanet - that grant users the ability to browse the site via a customizable interface. Apollo developer Christian Selig claimed last week that the new premium model could result in him having to shell out $20 million to keep his app going: "Going from a free API for 8 years to suddenly incurring massive costs is not something I can feasibly make work." He has since outlined plans to shutter the service: "Apollo will close down on June 30th. Reddit's recent decisions and actions have unfortunately made it impossible for Apollo to continue. Thank you so, so much for all the support over the years.""

Source: https://www.techpowerup.com/309962/reddit-communities-go-private-in-protest-over-policy-adjustments

 

[erek]

Big Protests!!! Also API issues

"They explained the though process behind the virtual march: "If it was a single subreddit going private, Reddit may intervene. But if it's half the entire website, then you feel a lot more pressured. This is a completely volunteer position, we don't receive any financial compensation, and despite that, we do like to take it quite seriously. Our entire community is supporting us against this change...It feels good to be able to have the power to say: 'We will not continue to moderate our communities if you push these changes through...If it's almost the entire website, would they destroy what they've built up in all these communities, just to push through this highly unpopular change that both the mods and users of Reddit are overwhelmingly against?"

Reddit's policy changes will introduce sizable charges for "premium access", which effectively kill off the need for popular third-party Reddit applications - such as Apollo, Reddit is Fun, Sync and ReddPlanet - that grant users the ability to browse the site via a customizable interface. Apollo developer Christian Selig claimed last week that the new premium model could result in him having to shell out $20 million to keep his app going: "Going from a free API for 8 years to suddenly incurring massive costs is not something I can feasibly make work." He has since outlined plans to shutter the service: "Apollo will close down on June 30th. Reddit's recent decisions and actions have unfortunately made it impossible for Apollo to continue. Thank you so, so much for all the support over the years.""

View attachment 576232
Source: https://www.techpowerup.com/309962/reddit-communities-go-private-in-protest-over-policy-adjustments

they gettin' DDoSed too or what, or just an artifact about going dark

 

[4saken]

It will be BAU on reddit any day now once everyone gets the panties unwadded.

 

[Armenius]

It needs to be pointed out that the protest is due to Reddit now licensing the API for hefty costs while the standard operating procedure for most social sites have been to offer it for free, with conditions. "Policy changes" really undersells what Reddit is doing. Reddit has been pushing toward an IPO for some time now, and this is just one of the steps in the process to inflate their value beforehand. They are "Digg"-ing themselves into the grave with their real user base, though.

they gettin' DDoSed too or what, or just an artifact about going dark

View attachment 576233

I suspect Reddit are doing it themselves to try and hide the protest, but it's going to be hard for them to keep it going for three days. Not all communities are participating in the protest, including some of the default ones.

 

[DukenukemX]

That isn't going to do anything. Just move to a competing platform and then Reddit will listen.

 

[PC-Only]

That isn't going to do anything. Just move to a competing platform and then Reddit will listen.

Yep, exactly. But to my knowledge there is no good competing platform. Reddit is in effect shutting down all APIs and third-party support to try to force people into more advertising intrusions and privacy-invasive data collection. Yet the people protesting, along with all the people not protesting too, would all protest if Reddit introduced a paid ad-free/data-collection-free plan that also allowed you to use third-party apps and APIs. So no one bothers to make an alternative since they know that's how consumers will react.

 

[DukenukemX]

Yep, exactly. But to my knowledge there is no good competing platform. Reddit is in effect shutting down all APIs and third-party support to try to force people into more advertising intrusions and privacy-invasive data collection. Yet the people protesting, along with all the people not protesting too, would all protest if Reddit introduced a paid ad-free/data-collection-free plan that also allowed you to use third-party apps and APIs. So no one bothers to make an alternative since they know that's how consumers will react.

When Twitter booted Trump, they quickly made an alternative called Truth Social. Ex-Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey made a new app called Bluesky, probably to spite Elon Musk. So people are very much capable of making a competing platform, it's just that nobody needed too until now. Which makes sense since Reddit has tried to become publicly traded, and they may try again this year. Which would explain their changes since they need infinite growth to get shareholders onboard.

 

[Okatis]

Yet the people protesting, along with all the people not protesting too, would all protest if Reddit introduced a paid ad-free/data-collection-free plan that also allowed you to use third-party apps and APIs. So no one bothers to make an alternative since they know that's how consumers will react.

I'm not sure this accurately portrays the issues that were had. There are users who have shown they're fine with paying third-party clients for example (ie: there's an audience for paying for a quality experience) but an issue that was raised is that Reddit by the Apollo dev's calculations makes just 12c per user per month, while setting the new API fees such that for Apollo's user metrics would cost them $2.50 per user per month (sans any app store fees).

So the criticism drawn was multiple things. They told devs in private, as late as earlier this year, that nothing would be changed wrt API access for 'years', and from devs' perspective Reddit wouldn't need to charge as much as they've announced to make more than they already do per user while still allowing third-party clients to charge users something more palatable. Then there's the (what appears to be) slander against the dev which users were also critical of.

So the protests are a bit more nuanced than 'Reddit is charging something now. Reddit bad.' from what I've seen.

 

[Armenius]

When Twitter booted Trump, they quickly made an alternative called Truth Social. Ex-Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey made a new app called Bluesky, probably to spite Elon Musk. So people are very much capable of making a competing platform, it's just that nobody needed too until now. Which makes sense since Reddit has tried to become publicly traded, and they may try again this year. Which would explain their changes since they need infinite growth to get shareholders onboard.

There have been many alternatives to Reddit that have tried and failed including Voat and Imzy. Some still exist like Hubski, but they don't have any activity worth talking about. The more popular alternatives like Steemit are just crypto circlejerks or extremist echo chambers like Ovarit.

 

[LukeTbk]

Reddit has tried to become publicly traded, and they may try again this year. Which would explain their changes since they need infinite growth to get shareholders onboard.

Twitter started to charge after stopping to be publicly traded, not sure if they expect constant growth or just making more than what it cost to run the site:
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/11/reddit-users-are-the-least-valuable-of-any-social-network.html

If the 340 request a day for the average user on Apollo is true and that they get lesser ad reach by that type of users with an ARPU of 30 cents, it must be hard to make that work.

Isn't just the new norm as ads revenues goes down (or just never cauth were they wanted for the non Facebook-Google player)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/02/23/facebook-instagram-fee/
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/meta-verification-canada-1.6860604#:~:text=Price will be $15.99 for web-based version or $19.99 on mobile&text=91-,Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, is launching a,that comes with enhanced features.

Twitter famously, snapchat: https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/29/23187132/snapchat-plus-subscription-announced, Discord https://techcrunch.com/2022/12/01/d...scriptions-so-servers-can-sell-premium-perks/

I really doubt the Sequoi Capital and other big player in private equity put less pressure on growth than the stock market, they are used and expect early investment in google-facebook to rehappen level of return, stock market people tend to be incredibly happy with 7% a year after inflation.

 

[sfsuphysics]

was playing a game yesterday and trying to find information about it via searching... and of course most of the useful looking posts were at reddit which gave me that crap.

 

[aliaskary77]

There have been many alternatives to Reddit that have tried and failed including Voat and Imzy. Some still exist like Hubski, but they don't have any activity worth talking about. The more popular alternatives like Steemit are just crypto circlejerks or extremist echo chambers like Ovarit.

Wow, have never heard of a single one of those other services besides Reddit.

 

[Aurelius]

There have been many alternatives to Reddit that have tried and failed including Voat and Imzy. Some still exist like Hubski, but they don't have any activity worth talking about. The more popular alternatives like Steemit are just crypto circlejerks or extremist echo chambers like Ovarit.

Yeah, that's the problem. A viable alternative to Reddit would require massive resources plus the broader community desire to migrate. The social network alternatives have mostly failed because they're usually created by teams that don't have the resources and/or are catering to the fringes, like Voat, Parler and Truth Social. I can't tell you how many sites have relied on claims of a "free speech" platform as their only hook... and sure enough, they promptly devolve into alt-right cesspools. Bluesky is one of the few exceptions so far.

 

[PC-Only]

So the protests are a bit more nuanced than 'Reddit is charging something now. Reddit bad.' from what I've seen.

I'm not saying the protests are bad nor that Reddit is acting in good faith. Reddit and their ownership/leadership is garbage. I'm just saying that the vast majority of consumers, including Reddit users, will not pay for an ad-free, data-collection-free service, which is what is required for internet services to both have financial success and not have these problems.

There have been many alternatives to Reddit that have tried and failed including Voat and Imzy. Some still exist like Hubski, but they don't have any activity worth talking about. The more popular alternatives like Steemit are just crypto circlejerks or extremist echo chambers like Ovarit.

Never heard of Imzy, but I remember Voat during one of the last times Reddit users were talking about moving. Voat was a technical disaster both during the last "event" and even after it had cooled down. Their servers were constantly either offline altogether or loading pages extremely slowly.

 

[Flogger23m]

Yep, exactly. But to my knowledge there is no good competing platform. Reddit is in effect shutting down all APIs and third-party support to try to force people into more advertising intrusions and privacy-invasive data collection. Yet the people protesting, along with all the people not protesting too, would all protest if Reddit introduced a paid ad-free/data-collection-free plan that also allowed you to use third-party apps and APIs. So no one bothers to make an alternative since they know that's how consumers will react.

Wouldn't be a bad idea as Reddit has gone down the toilet. Arguably it would be better if Reddit ceased to exist because forums like this are superior, but Reddit has its place for more generic topics. The problem is the community is perpetually offended by everything and the down voting feature essentially ensures the nannies and HR managers will control discourse.

So if a better, more hands off version of Reddit appears that would be great. Game developers and the like can go back to setting up their own forums would be even better.

 

[RanceJustice]

This campaign is without a doubt justified; Reddit, in their increasing attempt to prepare for IPO and to monetize every bit of content have essentially shot themselves in the foot. Third party clients and API are what the most devoted users of Reddit, especially the unpaid sub-reddit moderators, are used with frequency; the very users that Reddit depends upon to create the content that brings the views that they can then monetize. There are other elements of the controversy as well particularly regarding app developers, but in general Its the typical shortsighted capitalist approach that devalues their own product and its experience for users, but they cannot see that over the attempt to maximize every bit of ad revenue on the books this quarter, artificially limit the appearance of resources in use, and hope to get away with the big payday before the effects of the rugpull pile up.

The protest blackout has already had some minor successes - certain 3rd party applications have already been granted an excemption from the "new rules", especially those that were used by accessibility advocates (ie such as blind users) but which are chosen seem to be woefully imbalance; it seems to be more about not wanting the PR shitstorm of disabled users claiming their way to access the site had been cut off. For instance, one of the better FOSS Android apps , RedReader has been granted an excemption but another FOSS app, Infinity, has not. While this small movement in the right direction is at least heartening, and unlike a lot of online protests/boycotts the vast majority of subreddit communities in question have gone through with their promise to go dark, this has not yet resulted in Reddit reversing the affected policies en masse. While a two day blackout is useful, absent a serious reversal from the site there will need to be ongoing, amplified means of showing user displeasure and solidarity; otherwise, Reddit may just figure they can ride out a couple of days and then wait for the news cycle to change, left with a bunch of users milling around after the protest is over, with Reddit admins making a "we are listening"condescending post and going on their way.

When Twitter booted Trump, they quickly made an alternative called Truth Social. Ex-Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey made a new app called Bluesky, probably to spite Elon Musk. So people are very much capable of making a competing platform, it's just that nobody needed too until now. Which makes sense since Reddit has tried to become publicly traded, and they may try again this year. Which would explain their changes since they need infinite growth to get shareholders onboard.

There have been many alternatives to Reddit that have tried and failed including Voat and Imzy. Some still exist like Hubski, but they don't have any activity worth talking about. The more popular alternatives like Steemit are just crypto circlejerks or extremist echo chambers like Ovarit.

Its important that Reddit's success itself grew out of user distaste with the Digg news aggregator type site in the mid to late 2000s , though I am guessing that much like the Friendster to MySpace to Facebook transition, the big "social media era" companies including Reddit believe their larger user bases network effect provides considerable insulation. There are alternatives to Reddit but as has been mentioned they fall into several categories. The vast majority of them are situational, centralized "also ran" sites, many of which have a relatively narrow focus usually around a particular kind of content or identity/policy/ideology focus. Blockchain/Crypto-linked alternatives rarely provide anything new, but claim they're oh so innovative; overall its just a project designed to prop up the value of a particular crypto asset which is at odds with providing the best kind of service and experience at best and an outright grift at worst.
Ultimately its not just enough that, if there is to be an exodus from Reddit that people move onto a vague knockoff, crypto-grift, or the next, centralized, proprietary also-ran "Malibu Stacy w/ new hat" service, but instead advocating for a change in the underlying structure. There were other problems in the past with Reddit when the business development side clashed with user desires and there was expectation to make it more "advertiser friendly" among other issues, but given that it is all a top down centralized platform where users only have the illusion of control, there isn't much that can be done except pleading, explaining, or hoping to throw a big enough shitstorm those in charge walk it back; its very similar to Discord in many ways which also subsumed what used to be disparate sites and communities and now has vertically integrated them all under its thumb using the old silicon valley "Get em in the door, then once they can't dream of leaving, slam it shut with FOMO, monetize the hell out of it" plan.

When it comes to ostensibly harm reduction "social media", Reddit included (or at least abstracted), it appears that decentralized, federated solutions are the most promising. Fully distributed setups are not great for discoverability among other issues, but federated is a good place to start. The "Fediverse" collection of open source social media projects, self-hostable, federated interaction and most have at least some functionality with the ActivityPub protocol etc..are the most mature so far - https://fediverse.party/ - has an index of some of the projects, especially on the "all apps" section. Note that Bluesky/Bsky kinda sort of appears to be a federated alternative but there's a LOT up in the air with its AT Protocol and is being developed and tested privately so far; there are also other concerns. As far as the "Fediverse" is concerned there are already a couple of Reddit-style link aggregator community software projects of which Lemmy - https://join-lemmy.org/ - and Kbin - https://kbin.pub/en - seem to be some of the more mature and still updated. These allow anyone who wants to host a Lemmy / Kbin instance to to do and users can either sign up on one that is open to such things and has rules with which they agree, run their own instance, and still communicate with other servers - much like XMPP, Matrix, or even email. Now this does not mean that there aren't concerns, (Lemmy for instance I read at one time had some considerable privacy issues that needed to be addressed which I'll need to check up upon.) , but the federated setup with open standards and the ability to interact across nodes will help to push back against the kind of issues we see with Reddit.

I'd much rather see users transition onto a federated alternative than simply move to another proprietary, centralized community run and controlled by for a for profit entity. If that's Lemmy or Kbin, or something else entirely so be it, but it would be nice to see some movement in the right direction.

 

[Okatis]

I'm not saying the protests are bad nor that Reddit is acting in good faith. Reddit and their ownership/leadership is garbage. I'm just saying that the vast majority of consumers, including Reddit users, will not pay for an ad-free, data-collection-free service, which is what is required for internet services to both have financial success and not have these problems.

I mean, it's not an either/or thing though in terms of allowing a site to support itself. There's an ad-supported model, soon to be paid API access and separately a premium subscription. However if Reddit is only making 12 cents per month for each ad-supported user and it's already viable then one would think they could come to a middle ground with pricing which still makes API usage feasible for third-party clients, for users who do wish to pay but for a different experience (eg: many have expressed they prefer the Apollo app over the native Reddit app).

I think it's non-controversial to expect the majority of users from any site would prefer not to pay and so they can continue to be supported via ads. Particularly for Reddit which is mainly just a text-based discussion and link voting forum that only in recent years has begun hosting image/video content, yet hiking the price for API usage far above what they already make off of users (and ironically orders of magnitude higher than image/video hosting site Imgur's API pricing, if we assume bandwidth costs are a main factor) seems counter-productive if the goal was increasing monetization (rather than stifling third party clients), since there would be a threshold which would provide Reddit with more than they're already making per average ad-supported user, satisfy devs (this was expressed by them) and users who wish to pay for such clients that utilize the API.

 

[erek]

Twitter started to charge after stopping to be publicly traded, not sure if they expect constant growth or just making more than what it cost to run the site:
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/11/reddit-users-are-the-least-valuable-of-any-social-network.html

If the 340 request a day for the average user on Apollo is true and that they get lesser ad reach by that type of users with an ARPU of 30 cents, it must be hard to make that work.

Isn't just the new norm as ads revenues goes down (or just never cauth were they wanted for the non Facebook-Google player)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/02/23/facebook-instagram-fee/
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/meta-verification-canada-1.6860604#:~:text=Price will be $15.99 for web-based version or $19.99 on mobile&text=91-,Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, is launching a,that comes with enhanced features.

Twitter famously, snapchat: https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/29/23187132/snapchat-plus-subscription-announced, Discord https://techcrunch.com/2022/12/01/d...scriptions-so-servers-can-sell-premium-perks/

I really doubt the Sequoi Capital and other big player in private equity put less pressure on growth than the stock market, they are used and expect early investment in google-facebook to rehappen level of return, stock market people tend to be incredibly happy with 7% a year after inflation.

Reddit CEO Tells Employees That Subreddit Blackout 'Will Pass' (theverge.com)​

 

[III_Slyflyer_III]

I did not know what any of this was until I tried to view a google search today and saw a "Must be a Memeber" blah blah blah for something i was looking for (which I had never seen before). If the goal of these moderators is to turn people away, it does work, I just went to the next google search for my answer.

 

[DukenukemX]

Twitter started to charge after stopping to be publicly traded, not sure if they expect constant growth or just making more than what it cost to run the site:
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/11/reddit-users-are-the-least-valuable-of-any-social-network.html

If the 340 request a day for the average user on Apollo is true and that they get lesser ad reach by that type of users with an ARPU of 30 cents, it must be hard to make that work.

Isn't just the new norm as ads revenues goes down (or just never cauth were they wanted for the non Facebook-Google player)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/02/23/facebook-instagram-fee/
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/meta-verification-canada-1.6860604#:~:text=Price will be $15.99 for web-based version or $19.99 on mobile&text=91-,Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, is launching a,that comes with enhanced features.

Twitter famously, snapchat: https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/29/23187132/snapchat-plus-subscription-announced, Discord https://techcrunch.com/2022/12/01/d...scriptions-so-servers-can-sell-premium-perks/

I really doubt the Sequoi Capital and other big player in private equity put less pressure on growth than the stock market, they are used and expect early investment in google-facebook to rehappen level of return, stock market people tend to be incredibly happy with 7% a year after inflation.

I'm not the only one who came to the conclusion that Reddit is doing this to go publicly traded. Even Linus from Linus Tech Tips guessed as much as well. I doubt the Reddit owners need the money, as I'm sure they have more money than they know what to do with. This is to go publicly traded and take advantage that AI training maybe using Reddit. I can also see this backfiring really badly for Reddit because as soon as someone makes a worthy alternative, people will switch.

 

[LukeTbk]

I'm not the only one who came to the conclusion that Reddit is doing this to go publicly traded. Even Linus from Linus Tech Tips guessed as much as well. I doubt the Reddit owners need the money, as I'm sure they have more money than they know what to do with

This is strange, why are they going public if they do not need the money ? The owners are private equity and found in it purely for the money, no ? I am sure the timing is not coincidental, but it does not mean they would have never done it. Why do you think the current owner go public if they do not need the money ?

The decision to not charge was because it was believed that it helped growth and the future amount of money they will make, they do not see much growth in the future (and it starts to be something interesting to own for those equity people that like the 2000 time returns winner) so they go public to people that want less-risk, less return, ok with less growth.

You think Peter Thiel and Tencent expect less growth of their private equity than the public stockholder ? Why would that be the case ? The pre-public venture capital ownership are often people that like to see a double a year type of growth.

We have seen private company do it (with no expectation of going public soon), we have seen already public one do it, suspected to go public soon do it, there a constance, a lot (or almost all ?) major social media company created-try to create non ads base revenues sources.

Look at the growth rate of company pre becoming public vs when they are mature public one, the type of venture capital investor would have never supported Facebook-Twitter latest 5 years growth rate the first years of their existence, the idea that the obsession of growth is much lesser in the Silicone valley venture capital world seem just strange to me.

Reddit because as soon as someone makes a worthy alternative, people will switch.

And how will it finance itself ?

 

[aliaskary77]

More money! MOOOARRR!
I think it was more about how they went about doing it. 6 months ago, they said this was coming, but would not be much and everyone should be ok. The amount was finally disclosed and devs were given about 30 days to make changes. Reddit said they understand, but said, dont worry, you will get billed, but it wont be due for another 30 days, so you have 60 days. They would not push out the start date 3 months or 6 months for devs to adapt after they learned of the true impact.

 

[sfsuphysics]

Lowkey wish search engines would stop recommending these "locked pages" as results, it feels a lot like getting results for news outlets that want you to pay for their service as soon as you click in them

 

[DukenukemX]

This is strange, why are they going public if they do not need the money ? The owners are private equity and found in it purely for the money, no ? I am sure the timing is not coincidental, but it does not mean they would have never done it. Why do you think the current owner go public if they do not need the money ?

There's a difference between need and want. Alexis Kerry Ohanian the cofounder of Reddit is worth $70 million. Now if he needs money to buy himself a pack of Taiwanese lady boys like Bill Gates, that's a different story.

The decision to not charge was because it was believed that it helped growth and the future amount of money they will make, they do not see much growth in the future (and it starts to be something interesting to own for those equity people that like the 2000 time returns winner) so they go public to people that want less-risk, less return, ok with less growth.

You think Peter Thiel and Tencent expect less growth of their private equity than the public stockholder ? Why would that be the case ? The pre-public venture capital ownership are often people that like to see a double a year type of growth.

Not every company is capable of growth. Dare I say, no company is capable of infinite growth.

We have seen private company do it (with no expectation of going public soon), we have seen already public one do it, suspected to go public soon do it, there a constance, a lot (or almost all ?) major social media company created-try to create non ads base revenues sources.

If private companies do it then that's because they aspire to be a public company.

And how will it finance itself ?

Same way Reddit did. It doesn't matter anyway because the next step for Reddit is to sensor a lot of these subreddits, because that's what publicly traded companies do. Just like why Google keeps delaying Manifest V3, because it'll start a shit storm for them. Same reason Google hasn't extensively fought adblockers on YouTube, because again it'll likely end badly. Look at the fiasco that is Netflix’s Password Sharing rules and how it'll end badly for them. There's always an alternative waiting to take their place even though there's nothing there right now.

 

[Usual_suspect]

Wouldn't be a bad idea as Reddit has gone down the toilet. Arguably it would be better if Reddit ceased to exist because forums like this are superior, but Reddit has its place for more generic topics. The problem is the community is perpetually offended by everything and the down voting feature essentially ensures the nannies and HR managers will control discourse.

So if a better, more hands off version of Reddit appears that would be great. Game developers and the like can go back to setting up their own forums would be even better.

Spot on. Reddit is a cesspool of echo chambers. I frequent the PCMR, Nvidia, AMD, and Build a PC subreddits, and anytime I post something actually factual, with data to back it up, and/or give an opinion on anything that's different, no matter how small, than what others in the same thread are stating I come back hours later to see 30-40 downvotes and people blasting me telling me how wrong I am, blah blah blah.

It's a sad state when you can't even share an opinion, or provide an answer with data to help people asking questions, offer suggestions, or provide a factual rebuttal to someone posting something that's obviously either bullshit, or not very well thought out without being e-attacked with downvotes, getting the random "we heard you're suicidal" message, or sub-reddit ban. This is why I'm posting here in these forums more and more, discussions here are more level headed, and not so echo-chamber-y.

 

[LukeTbk]

Not every company is capable of growth. Dare I say, no company is capable of infinite growth.

Yes sure, but do you really think that the Silicon Valley VC world want less to see annual growth from their start-up than the stock market mature company world ?

If private companies do it then that's because they aspire to be a public company.

Maybe twitter aspire to return to be a public company again soon, but that would be a quick turn around. You do not need that much explanation on why people want money, regardless of a company structure.

Take Dell for an example, when it turned private it grew much more (via a lot of debt) than before, with stockholder that did not believe much on their chance and wanted them to cash cow until what they thought the inevitable death.

There's a difference between need and want. Alexis Kerry Ohanian the cofounder of Reddit is worth $70 million.

is he not an owner since reddit was sold to Conde Nast ? Private equity fund often are packed with rich "regular" doctor-dentist retirement fund, does Tencent need or want more money is a bit of a strange question, the owner are not just snoop Doog type of individuals but funds as well.

The difference between that kind of move:
in 2019, Reddit raised $300 million in funding in a Series D round, led by Chinese tech giant Tencent. This investment made Tencent the controlling shareholder of Reddit, with a 10% stake in the company.

And going to the public stock market, exist I am sure, but what Tencent want and the kind of pressure it will do on the company must be in most ways quite comparable to public share holders.

Same way Reddit did.

Was it working or bleeding money like Twitter did but was supported by people because it was showing giant user growth in the past ?

because that's what publicly traded companies do.

And private one like Tiktok, Reddit now (it is not like censorship on reddit was not already giant) and Twitter. It tend to be what company that need to please advertisers do, more than a public-private distinction.

 

[t1k]

 

[erek]

Yes sure, but do you really think that the Silicon Valley VC world want less to see annual growth from their start-up than the stock market mature company world ?


Maybe twitter aspire to return to be a public company again soon, but that would be a quick turn around. You do not need that much explanation on why people want money, regardless of a company structure.

Take Dell for an example, when it turned private it grew much more (via a lot of debt) than before, with stockholder that did not believe much on their chance and wanted them to cash cow until what they thought the inevitable death.


is he not an owner since reddit was sold to Conde Nast ? Private equity fund often are packed with rich "regular" doctor-dentist retirement fund, does Tencent need or want more money is a bit of a strange question, the owner are not just snoop Doog type of individuals but funds as well.

The difference between that kind of move:
in 2019, Reddit raised $300 million in funding in a Series D round, led by Chinese tech giant Tencent. This investment made Tencent the controlling shareholder of Reddit, with a 10% stake in the company.

And going to the public stock market, exist I am sure, but what Tencent want and the kind of pressure it will do on the company must be in most ways quite comparable to public share holders.


Was it working or bleeding money like Twitter did but was supported by people because it was showing giant user growth in the past ?


And private one like Tiktok, Reddit now (it is not like censorship on reddit was not already giant) and Twitter. It tend to be what company that need to please advertisers do, more than a public-private distinction.

Reddit CEO Steve Huffman: Reddit 'Was Never Designed To Support Third-Party Apps' (theverge.com)44​

Posted by BeauHD on Thursday June 15, 2023 @09:00PM from the standing-their-ground dept.
Reddit CEO Steve Huffman says he is refusing to undo the company's decision to increase prices for third-party app developers, despite thousands of subreddits pledging to keep their subreddits private or restricted in protest. "It's a startling change for many members of the Reddit community, but it's one that Reddit CEO Steve Huffman tells The Verge that he's fine with making," writes The Verge's Jay Peters. "Those third-party apps, in his eyes, aren't adding much value to the platform." From the report:"So the vast majority of the uses of the API -- not [third-party apps like Apollo for Reddit] -- the other 98 percent of them, make tools, bots, enhancements to Reddit. That's what the API is for," Huffman says. "It was never designed to support third-party apps." According to Huffman, he "let it exist," and "I should take the blame for that because I was the guy arguing for that for a long time." Huffman now takes issue with the third-party apps that are building a business on top of his own. "I didn't know -- and this is my fault -- the extent that they were profiting off of our API. That these were not charities."

I asked him if he felt that Apollo, rif for Reddit, and Sync, which all plan to shut down as a result of the pricing changes, don't add value to Reddit. "Not as much as they take," he says. "No way." "They need to pay for this. That is fair. What our peers have done is banned them entirely. And we said no, you know what, we believe in free markets. You need to cover your costs," he says. Apollo developer Christian Selig recently did the math for us on The Vergecast, though, and suggested that covering Reddit's asking price with only 30 days' notice would have been nigh-impossible.

 

[erek]

Reddit Threatens to Remove Moderators From Subreddits Continuing Apollo-Related Blackouts https://www.macrumors.com/2023/06/15/reddit-threatens-to-remove-subreddit-moderators/

 

[Halon]

Reddit sold itself to venture capital ghouls, one funding round at a time. The greater instability in the tech market's hitting them, Huffman's going about this with a smile on his face to conceal the fact that the wolves are at his door, and the lack of any kind of nuance in pricing models (maybe keep the rates low for individual users while ramping them up for AI scrapers? Just a thought?) shows how committed they are to squashing things that don't enrich them at this point.

Reddit was never, ever your friend. And now they're scrambling to lock everybody in.

 

[jfreund]

Reddit wants everybody on their app so they get the advertising and data harvesting.

 

[freeagentt]

Fuck Reddit. They can burn for all I care.

I don't Reddit.

 

[flegg]

Spot on. Reddit is a cesspool of echo chambers. I frequent the PCMR, Nvidia, AMD, and Build a PC subreddits, and anytime I post something actually factual, with data to back it up, and/or give an opinion on anything that's different, no matter how small, than what others in the same thread are stating I come back hours later to see 30-40 downvotes and people blasting me telling me how wrong I am, blah blah blah.

It's a sad state when you can't even share an opinion, or provide an answer with data to help people asking questions, offer suggestions, or provide a factual rebuttal to someone posting something that's obviously either bullshit, or not very well thought out without being e-attacked with downvotes, getting the random "we heard you're suicidal" message, or sub-reddit ban. This is why I'm posting here in these forums more and more, discussions here are more level headed, and not so echo-chamber-y.

Reddit works well for anime and sometimes sports and finance but the rest of the subreddits are absolutely terrible (attack on titan sub was pretty terrible too though thanks to the mods). r/wsb was/is also a uniqe monster. Discord can easily replace reddit for that stuff though - just add a !remindme feature or way to save comments so you can call people out on their bad takes after the leaves blow. The low activity subs can be replaced by forums and the echo chambers prob replaced by tiktok.

 

[bigdogchris]

The Comrades at Reddit are doing what they do best.

 

[erek]

The Comrades at Reddit are doing what they do best.

Reddit Says It Won't Force Subreddits Back Open (theverge.com)​

Hmm, it's lasting longer than the CEO predicted?

 

[1_rick]

Reddit wants everybody on their app so they get the advertising and data harvesting.

Step one should be "fix their crappy app."

 

[Usual_suspect]

Reddit Says It Won't Force Subreddits Back Open (theverge.com)​

Hmm, it's lasting longer than the CEO predicted?

More like showing they don't really care. A lot of those that are still closed can easily be replaced, and it's not like Reddit's traffic just took this huge down turn, the website is still seeing tons and tons of traffic despite these sub's being closed. At the end of the day this so-called blackout amounted nothing more than a bunch of kids throwing temper tantrums because mommy and daddy took away their toys and told them it's time to grow up and get a real job.

 

[1_rick]

Reddit works well for anime and sometimes sports and finance but the rest of the subreddits are absolutely terrible

r/embedded (for stuff like microcontrollers) and some of the custom keyboard subs were pretty good although in the latter I got the feeling that some things were better left undiscussed.

 

[MrGuvernment]

More like showing they don't really care. A lot of those that are still closed can easily be replaced, and it's not like Reddit's traffic just took this huge down turn, the website is still seeing tons and tons of traffic despite these sub's being closed. At the end of the day this so-called blackout amounted nothing more than a bunch of kids throwing temper tantrums because mommy and daddy took away their toys and told them it's time to grow up and get a real job.

I am also sure Reddit themselves could just unlock all these subreddits anyways, if they really wanted to and simply remove said control from who ever has it...

lets be real, the average reddit user likely has no idea what an API even is and those protesting likely think they have more power, than they really do. It is like [H]ardcore people here thinking that Asus, or GigaByte or someone will change their prices or service if enough of us complain cause "we build computers for friends and family and tell them what to buy!"

 

[LukeTbk]

those protesting likely think they have more power, than they really do

Because Reddit need moderation to sell ads, they probably have a quite good deal of power, maybe Reddit will buy them with some payment deal.

Maybe they should have closed the apis at the same time Twitter-Facebook did it around 10 years ago